Don’t Limit The Size Of Your Box!

Sometime around 1999, I did something that, at that time, I thought I had to do. After talking with my wife and my pastor, not to mention lots of prayer, I went down in front of my church at the time and surrendered to the ministry.

Shortly after that, my family and I moved to seminary. I spent a year going to school and working three jobs. Near the end of that first year, I came home exhausted. I just couldn’t do it.

Ministry was over. I couldn’t do it. I gave up.

Or so I thought.

A few months later I began preaching at a campground for the remainder of the summer. Now I’m in my twelfth year of this ministry.

What have I learned over these past dozen years? That being called to the ministry does not mean you have to be a pastor to be in ministry. You see, that is the only thing I could see when I announced that call to ministry so many years ago. I thought that meant that I had to pastor a church to be of any use to God in the ministry. I thought that was the only way that I could proclaim the gospel was to be a pastor.

Now, let me share with you how God has a bit of a sense of humor.

I had been asking the Lord to let me speak at some point afterI was done with the campground ministry this year. So you know what happened?

My pastor emailed me recently and asked me if I would speak during an upcoming Wednesday night. I had to laugh because that wasn’t what I asked for. It wasn’t on my timetable.

God doesn’t work according to my schedule, so I said yes. I’m not sure what He has in store, but I’m excited about it. It goes along with what I see in the Bible though.

God used a century old man to start a nation.

He called an 80-year-old to lead that same nation out of slavery.

The Lord had Samuel anoint a teenager to be king of this nation.

He caused a teenage, engaged virgin to become pregnant and give birth to the God-Man.

So, why should he follow my timeline?

We create boxes that we put God in and believe our ministries cannot get any larger. That isn’t what Jabez prayed, was it? He prayed that the Lord would expand his territory. Yet, we limit God and the box of ministry He gives us.

We must stop. We need to pray like Jabez did and ask the Lord to expand our territory without fences. We must stop limiting the size of our box.

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I try hard not to limit the size of my “God-box.” I also agree with you that we often have a misconception that “real” ministry only happens in the pulpit/pastoral responsibility. Nothing can be farther from the truth. You are proof of that.